Armstrong will always be on the defensive

Gwen Knapp Tour of California exclusive to print edition

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, May 23, 2010

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Armstrong will always be on the defensive

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There will not be a winner in the race between Lance Armstrong and the people who believe that he has perpetrated the biggest fraud in the history of sports. Armstrong still wears the yellow jersey in this endless tour, but the finish line keeps moving.

The reports that the super-cop of doping, Jeff Novitzky, has interviewed the newly chatty Floyd Landis seem ominous for Armstrong. Landis apparently has no hard evidence against his former teammate, but simply putting Armstrong's scent under Novitzky's nose creates an unprecedented hazard for the cycling icon. The federal investigator relentlessly has taken a sledgehammer to the culture of performance-enhancing drugs for almost seven years.

But he has not directly investigated athletes as users. The primary target in every case has been a distributor, a rogue doctor, a personal trainer. Athletes were subpoenaed as witnesses, and then prosecuted only if they lied about their involvement.

In Armstrong's case, whom would he pursue? The international flavor of his sport complicates the task of finding a target. Michele Ferrari, Armstrong's doctor/trainer, is Italian. His home country already has tried and convicted him of involvement in doping athletes, then seen the conviction overturned. Armstrong's longtime team manager, Johan Bruyneel, is Belgian.

The feds filed a criminal complaint last week against Canadian doctor Anthony Galea, but he is accused of doing extensive work in this country, and Canada also has charged him with pharmaceutical crimes.

Novitzky might be able to stretch the interpretation of "distributor" and pursue past and present backers of Armstrong's teams, including San Francisco financier Thomas Weisel, whose investment firm was charged with a civil complaint of securities fraud three days before Landis' confessions and accusations became public.

In a bigger stretch, Armstrong could be held accountable if Novitzky found credible evidence that, as the de facto team leader, the seven-time Tour de France winner persuaded teammates/domestiques to dope in the service of his ambitions.

But even if Novitzky has the stomach for such a pursuit, would prosecutors go to such lengths to convict a man who has become a cult hero to cancer patients and their families? The public finds the endless perjury case against Barry Bonds distasteful, and in the personal-appeal department, he can't touch the man who launched 70 million yellow silicone bracelets.

In the end, this fight probably won't be about the law or suspensions or overturned victories. It will be about Armstrong's legacy, and whether the many accusations against him, though officially fruitless, undermine the public's faith in a once-transcendent sports figure. That alone could be a doping deterrent for future athletes, all of whom surely will lack Armstrong's sacred-cow status.

For that to happen, the accusations - and their sheer volume - have to appear legitimate. At the moment, it seems easy to dismiss Landis' finger-pointing. He doped himself, lied for years after getting busted by a French lab, duped supporters into donating to his defense campaign, and now faces criminal charges in France for computer tampering ascribed to his camp. He also comes across as bitter about being excluded from this year's Tour of California and being cast aside by the sport in general.

But his stories have an odd ring of truth. He said he oversaw the temperature of a refrigerator containing stored blood that Armstrong planned to transfuse into himself before a race. Landis also described a team bus pulling off the side of a road to accommodate a team-wide injection session.

If he were fictionalizing, why not go with a straightforward, Canseco-esque tale: "We shot up together in a bathroom stall"?

Also, Landis assumed a substantial risk by confessing and accusing. He pushed himself away from the only profession he has known and became a whistle-blower - and few whistle-blowers have achieved happy endings.

Trevor Graham, Marion Jones' former coach, turned over a syringe of the designer steroid THG in hopes of bringing down BALCO founder Victor Conte. After he lied to federal investigators about his own chemical enterprises, Graham ended up with a sentence of year's house arrest.

Troy Ellerman, a BALCO defense attorney, received a 2 1/2 -year prison sentence for leaking grand-jury testimony to The Chronicle, in hopes of showing that the government had turned anonymous flunkies into fall guys for famous athletes. Ellerman was sentenced to more than twice as much time as anyone who used or dealt the performance-enhancers.

Landis has other company. As a former Armstrong teammate who has confessed or been caught, he is not alone. Nor is he unique as a former associate pointing fingers. The list keeps growing. The finish line keeps moving. It almost certainly will never be crossed.